Tips from great entrepreneurs Series … Part 1

1. “Make something people want” by Paul Graham.If no one wants what you are building, by definition, why build it at all? When starting, you need to obsess over knowing your users and building a product for them.

2. “Develop personal connection with people that will help you, learn to identify talented people, work hard” by Sam Altman.

3. “Tell me how I’m acquiring people, tell me how we are doing getting them to the ‘aha moment’, and tell me core engagement. Don’t focus on things that destroy long term value” by Chamath Palihapitya. Chamath is the former Head of Growth at Facebook. His advice is to find out as soon as possible where your users are getting the core product value, and obsessively lead them there. For Facebook, most users who got to 14 friends in 7 days, stayed in the platform as active users. His team’s only focus was to get as many people as possible to that point, and it worked: he put Facebook in the path to 1 billion users

4. “He who cares less wins & Simplicity is powerful ” by Tim Ferris. This is great advice on negotiation by best-selling author and investor Tim Ferriss. If you care less about the outcome than your counterpart, and you express this (in words or body language), your odds of getting the better end of the deal automatically increase.

5. “Be a cockroach” by Paul Graham. According to Y Combinator’s founder and former president, startups need to focus on one thing: don’t die. Cockroaches are insanely hard to kill. Be one of them.

6. “Virality isn’t luck. It’s not magic. And it’s not random. There’s a science behind why people talk and share. A recipe. A formula, even” by Jonah Berger. Every now and then, there are some things that go viral unexpectedly. In the startup world, this is very rare. For instance, the Mailbox pre-launch waiting list had hundreds of thousands of users waiting, but it wasn’t luck. It was a perfectly engineered system designed to foster virality and sharing. A few months later they got acquired by Dropbox.

7. “Don’t copy your competition. Why assume they know what they are doing?” by Tucker Max. I’ve seen this happen all the time. When someone starts a business, and they see their competitors going after a content strategy, they are inclined to do the same thing. The problem is, you have no idea if your competitors tested other acquisition channels, or are actually having real sales because of that. Always question assumptions and default to testing.

8. “The consumer is not a moron; she is your wife.” by David Ogilvy. Amazing lesson by the legendary David Ogilvy. The consumer is the every man and women out there. The consumer is someone like you, with a life, a job and a family. They aren’t numbers and, most certainly, they aren’t stupid. You should show respect towards the consumer.

9. “Build it, and they will come” only works in the movies. Social Media is a “build it, nurture it, engage them and they may come and stay.” by Seth Godin. People won’t use your product just because it’s out there. You need to make people want it. You need to engage and make them believe your product is the one they should be using. The competition is too big. It’s that simple.

10. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” by Bill Gates. If someone isn’t completely happy with your product, then that’s a sign that there is an unfulfilled need for at least a segment of the market.

Here is the part 1 for our entrepreneurship tips from great people around the world. We will come up with part 2 very soon. Till then stay tuned.